A Visit to an African Village

On Thursday, July 2nd, we went to visit a local village. This is an authentic village that is not a usual stop on any tourist's itinerary. Amawaterways has supported it by providing the funds to build a protected vegetable garden. Others have offered help for water. The second son of the town elder was our tour guide and helped us understand their way of life. Later we visited a small market area where there was singing and dancing followed by some time to buy some of their crafts.

A general shot of the village. Each house is protected by a reed wall.

They use cow dung mixed with mud to make their stucco walls. Dung is also used in fires for cooking.

 

Reeds are also used in the mud/dung mix to reinforce their house walls much like we use rebar.

 

Here is the vegetable garden that Amawaterways helped finance.

 

 

This photo shows the town elder's wife with some of her grandchildren.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the town elder together with his second son, the one who gave us our tour.

 

Linda brought a bag of candy and offered it to the elder's first son who will become the new town elder when his father passes on. The kids were so excited about the candy, and they lined up to get their piece!

 

Here is a video of the second son dancing with another woman. One child keeps wanting to get involved!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell Dinner on the Zambezi Queen

On Thursday, July 3rd, the crew of the Zambezi Queen offered us a farewell dinner with an African theme. After dinner, they entertained us with singing and dancing. They even got a few of us passengers out on the line dance floor, including Linda.

 

 

 

 

The first video is the beginning of the show. It's kind of long, but if you look closely, you'll see Linda in her little red skirt. The man playing the large drum is the captain of the Zambezi Queen.

 

Later they sang some songs. Here's an example.

 

Animals of all Kinds

Botswana and Namibia are rich in wildlife of all kinds. Here is a mix of what we've seen.

Hippo skin is very sensitive to the sun. Therefore, they spend most of the time in the water. We were able to capture several shots with hippos on the shore. Here, you can see how large they are compared to their babies.

 

 

There are crocodiles hiding out all along the water's edge just waiting for an unsuspecting animal of any kind.

 

This monster of a croc was hanging out by the water on our way back from a morning water safari.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are dozens of bird species in this part of the world. Here are some shots of just a few of what we saw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one is a fish eagle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we caught a kingfisher along the banks of the Chobe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We certainly lucked out when we saw this one! It's a lilac breasted roller. The colors are so dramatic!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this one's called a yellow-billed stork.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This shot is little different. It's a termite hill. We saw them all over the Chobe National Park. Some are active, like this one, and others are dried up. Some get to be 9 meters high!

 

The safari land cruisers we were in were equipped with radios so the drivers could talk to each other about the animals they found. We were looking all over for lions and leopards, but were having no luck. Right before lunch we heard there was a female with four cubs about 25 yards off the road. We drove in and found them. This shot is of the mother laying on her back, partially hidden by the foliage.

 

 

We drove around to the other side and caught this shot of one of the cubs. The driver estimated his/her age at 3-4 months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One late afternoon we came upon a herd of African buffalos.

 

 

We had a picnic lunch out by the shore of the Chobe river. The guides had to continually throw stones at the baboons to keep them away. They were in stealth mode that afternoon, because one woman turned her back for a second and a baboon swooped in and stole her apple.

 

 

 

 

Probably the most prevalent animal we saw was the impala. One time we saw a herd of maybe 100-200 animals all in one place.

 

 

These impalas are so regal looking with their horns!

 

 

We saw many giraffes in Chobe National Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out those lips!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch we came upon a group of kudu eating off of some trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kudu belong to the antelope family and are a little larger than the impalas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the horns on this male!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a black sable, from the horse family according to our guide. They are extremely rare, an endangered species.

 

 

 

 

 

As we headed back to the Zambezi Queen we were greeted by this sight!!!

 

 

Elephants in Botswana and Namibia

 

There are over 120,000 elephants in the Chobe National Park ecosystem, so wherever we went, there were elephants- elephants of all sizes, from babies to huge bull elephants.

 

 

 

 

 

There are many islands in the river, and the elephants go wherever they want to find the best grasses.

 

 

Baby elephants are well-cared for by the rest of the family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, elephants just like to stop and wallow in the mud. We saw this several times.

 

 

Here's a video of some elephants that stopped to wallow in the mud. Check out the baby! Remember, to watch the video you must go to the website (goldentrailsofafrica.blogspot.com).

 

These animals are so majest

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are a couple more photos showing how the family protects its babies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Zambezi Queen Riverboat

We've been out of touch for the last four or five days because we had no internet while in Botswana and Namibia. Now we're in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and there is great wi-fi in our hotel.

The transfer from the hotel in Johannesburg to the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg last Monday was excellent. We were chauffered in a Mercedes Benz with a guide to tell us a bit of history of South Africa. We were the only passengers.

The plane that flew us from Johannesburg to Kasane, Botswana was an AVRO-RJ85, a regional jet of sorts. We had a very nice flight of about two hours that included a light lunch. When we arrived in Kasane, we had to go through a passport control station manned by one person for the whole plane.

We boarded some safari Land Cruisers to take us down to the river. We also had to pass through Immigration again because we were leaving Botswana. The Zambezi Queen cruises in Namibian waters on the Chobe River.

 

We boarded some boats to take us to the other side of the river to pass through Namibian Immigration.

 

We re-boaded the boats to take us out to the Zambezi Queen. The African crew welcomed us with songs. This would be our home for the next four nights.

This is a shot of the top deck where we ate all our meals. The crew was very friendly, and even addressed Linda by her first name. We celebrated her birthday onboard, and the crew sang "Happy Birthday" to her that night.

Our cabin was very spacious with private bathroom and even a king-size bed. We had air conditioning, a balcony, toiletries, hair dryer- the works. They run a very classy operation on the Zambezi Queen.

 

We re-boarded the boats to take us up (or down) river to get to the Zambezi Queen. African sounds of the crew singing welcomed us. This would be our home for the next four nights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kingfisher to Elephant

Kingfisher Lunch

This was the most hilarious thing. We were out in a blind on the shore of a lake looking at different bird species. This kingfisher has a fish in its mouth that is obviously too big to swallow. So he's thrashing it back and forth trying to break it into smaller pieces. Funny!

We saw lots of elephants in Pilanesberg refuge. Here's a shot of a family with two babies!

 

 

Here's a shot showing both babies!!!

 

 

 

Baby Elephant Sand Bath

In this video a baby elephant is picking up sand with its trunk and spraying it across its back!!!

 

Linda says I have to bribe her to include this photo. On Saturday, June 27th, we went to an elephant sanctuary. During one portion of the tour, guests were invited to feed an elephant. I convinced Linda to participate so I could take her picture.

 

 

During another portion of the tour guests were invited to come up and touch the elephant. Again, I convinced Linda. Of course, I couldn't participate because I had to take the picture.

 

 

In this segment, guests were invited to have a kiss from one of the elephants. When Linda saw the big dirty mark on the cheek of this girl, she declined.

 

 

Here both of us are holding on to the tusks. Man, is the elephant ever huge compared to our size!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Untitled

 

Welcome to Africa! This is our first safari adventure of the trip. We hired a local guide to take us to Pilanesberg which is a game preserve about 2-1/2 hours to the northwest of Johannesburg. We spent almost 7 hours driving around in the preserve looking for the best photographic shots of the various animals. It was a long day- 12 hours but definitely worth it.

This was our first encounter with wildlife- a group of impalas.

There are a lot of impalas in the preserve. In fact, so many that it got to the point where if anyone said, "Stop, I see something", that we would say, "Oh, it's just another impala.

We stopped by a mudhole and found a large group of hippopottimi lazing in the afternoon sun.

This is a dead giraffe. We couldn't decide how he died because there is a large slit down the back of its neck.

We saw this lone ostrich foraging along the road.

There were lots of giraffe in the preserve!!!

Our guide is a professional wildlife photographer, and he brings all sorts of camera equipment on his trips for customers to borrow if they don't have their own. He lent me a 100-400mm professional level Canon lens which I used to the utmost. Won't be buying though at $1600. for the lens only!!!

How does a giraffe, being so tall, take a drink of water? Very carefully!!!

We found a favorite watering hole for a variety of animals including giraffes, impalas, warthogs, and zebras.

Here's a group of zebra that came down for a refreshing drink. There's also a warthog in the upper right corner of the photo!

I found the stripes on these animals to be so dramatic, especially with a large, powerful telephoto lens like the 100-400.

No safari to Africa would be complete without seeing a rhino. Here we had to stop at an apparent rhino crossing.

At 4:00 we were about ready to head back to our hotel..... The problem was that we had seen no lions, and our guide was checking all the favorite haunts. We were heading down into a dip in the road when we came across this pride of six lions, two large and four smaller ones.. There were some young males in the group.

Here's a shot of one of the young males!

We were very lukcy to have found this pride when we did. We almost missed seeing them.